Lately I have been having strange thoughts. I was reading the IPCC report that came out in 2007 and thinking, can it really all be true? Then I started looking into it. First of all I read a bit of a blog by James Delingpole, nothing hard, you understand. Just soft stuff that anyone can understand. He introduced me to Lord Monckton who used graphs and stuff to get me onto the harder stuff.
Monckton got me into some serious climate change model falsifying and hockey stick breaking and introduced me to Mr Big, Anthony Watts who got me into his circle of climate science skeptics, meeting up every now and again to share stolen emails and pass around the HADCRUT, really serious stuff. Now I think I am addicted to climate science denial. How would I know and what can I do if I am addicted?
Signed
A.L. Oser
Dear A
From what you tell me it is quite possible that you are addicted to denialism. It would have helped if you had given more information. For instance, do you find all your graphs begin in 1998. Do you see only the same four or five emails or do you actually spend time on the other 4,995? These are important questions.
Your story is so typical of thousands. You meet someone on the Internet who tells you interesting little bits about themselves, perhaps they are an English graduate, or a member of the house of Lords who isn't actually a member, or they used to be a weather presenter on the TV. You get mixed up in that world of celebrity. Then they go from the soft stuff, like warming hasn't been happening at a statistically significant rate this century to harder stuff, like curve fitting and adding spurious constants to their models. Then finally they hook you on the hardest stuff: the new world order conspiracy in which a bunch of shadowy people working above governments are taking over the world. Or perhaps they've told you it's about lizards.
Once you are hooked, there really isn't very much that can be done. You see, when someone points out a mistake in your analysis of Central England Temperature records, you will react with abuse and not with a polite thanks, I will change it next time. When a comment questions something about your data, you will accuse them of being in the pay of someone even though your money comes from a person who you were put in contact with by a shady right wing think tank that formerly took cash from tobacco companies to deny the effects of passive smoking.
You could try aversion therapy. That requires you only to log on to sites written by bona fide climate scientists. Or you could try cognitive behavioural therapy where you will have to sit and think about why you've been deluded into thinking that people with qualifications in massage, journalism, English Literature or none at all are competent to criticise let alone disprove scientists who have studied the subject in detail for twenty, thirty years, and not in their spare time at home after a day's work.
In the end, your delusions are likely to persist if you hang around with the same old friends who keep telling you how wonderful your article on volcanoes or polar bears or tree rings is. Remember, they are addicted like you are so they are hardly likely to be thinking straight.
One thing I read in the comments at WUWT is that climate science/anthropogenic global warming is a religion. I know this comment is old but it is representative:
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
The Free Dictionary definition #4 might admit that climate change science is a religion but that definition clearly puts lots of things in the realm of religion. My devotion to cricket, for instance, would make it onto the list as a religion when clearly it is not. So #4 reallly isn't describing a religion at all but fanaticism of a sort.
A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods.
Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual, and which are connected in idea with the gods.
Prayer and other forms of communication with gods.
A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an over-all purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it.
A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.
A social group bound together by the above.
This is more like it so let's take them one at a time and see how climate change science scores in the religion stakes.
Belief in supernatural beings (gods).
Science does not permit of supernatural explanations - those need to be replicable. Deniers, on the other hand, quite often link their views on climate change to supernatural beings
A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
Science has no sacred or profane objects. Evolution deniers claim that Darwin's On The Origin Of Species is a sacred book without realising that it is totally out of date, has things we know are untrue and has been superceded by more modern research. It is read because it is an introduction to the subject and one of the clearest descriptions of natural selection there is. However, you can understand evolution without reading a single word of it.
Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.
Science has a "method" of sorts, much discussed by philosophers and sociologists, but there are no ritual acts as such.
A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods.
Scientists are expected to behave ethically and adhere to good standards of evidence and research but there is nothing about any gods that apply these standards. Peer review and publication often root out the good from the bad.
Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual, and which are connected in idea with the gods.
Awe seems to be a human trait and anyone can be in awe of many things. However, scientific awe seems unconnected to sacred objects, ritual or anything else that characterises religions as most people understand them.I feel awe each time I see the Saturn V rocket at the Kennedy Space Center. Does that mean spaceflight is religion?
Prayer and other forms of communication with gods.
Science doesn't need prayer to continue.
A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an over-all purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it.
This might include science as religion but honestly no one would seriously entertain that idea. Science provides information and understanding about the world but it does not explain an over-all purpose to life beyond that suggested by evolution and that, as many of its critics say, is entirely materialistic.
A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.
Science is a job in the end. You can take it or leave it.
A social group bound together by the above.
Scientists are bound as a group by the common bond of trying to understand the Universe. They are not bound by prayer, ritual or the need to believe in anything supernatural. There are religious scientists, and some famously atheist ones, but following where the evidence leads is an unlikely version of religion.
The suggestion that one form or another of science is a religion is merely there as an insult. Adherents to the chosen scientific field, be it climate change or evolution, are characterised as religious adherents because it suits their enemies to so describe them. It is truly unintelligent or uninformed to think otherwise.
So what claiming science as a religion is about is mere rhetoric and has no basis in actual reasoning. It is meant as an insult, even by those who are religious. No one would truly claim science is a religion except perhaps under the trivial definition #4 above. That won't stop deniers using the term.
Demogblog has two pieces of interest on Salby, here and here, that you should read, filling in details I didn't know when I wrote what follows. I don't know if people picked up on some I what I say below but I have seen some points I make repeated elsewhere. It is nice to see I am not alone in my conclusions at least. What follows has not been changed:
"Science is never settled. If something is settled, it's not science" Murry Salby
Meet Murry Salby. He needs your help because he has found himself without employment since MacQuarie University decided it could happily carry on without him. Formerly he had employment at the University of Colorado-Boulder where he was a stunning success, as witness by the entries at RateMyProfessors.com. Here are some highlights (cough) from his page:
Worst class I've taken at CU. Very unaproachable, rude, didn't explain diagrams he drew, uninteresting. If you're going to take this class, make sure you get the other teacher.
One of the worst professors I've encountered. The class could have been interesting and clear but he made it complicated and completely unclear. Terrible instructor
Lectures very boring and dull...notes taken right out of the textbook so why bother going?
Very knowledgable and posessed technical mastery of the material. Course was as interesting as the prof. Superb.
Very boring and unclear lectures.
I hated going to his classes. Boring!
Straightforward class, but a bit of a tightwad with policies, no curves on tests, and also has bad habit of totally stopping class for people talking the slightest bit...needs to loosen up there a bit IMO
OK, I lied. They are all seven of the comments but, although this is a small sample size, I think we make some sort of conclusion. Not the best lecturer, then.
We don't have to rely on the postings of students. We can look on YouTube (hooray) and watch the man in action himself (boo). Go on, try sitting through the video I put up the top. At the end (skip to it, I did), Salby quotes Richard Feynman, so for comparison, here's the late, great, Nobel Prize winning (no, he really did, Lord Monckton, and got a medal and not a phoney pin badge) Feynman in action, in the video that Salby quotes from:
By the way, Salby says that Feynman came up with a term for the sort of science he decries: Cult Science. But that's not what Feynman said. He called it Cargo Cult Science, after the cargo cults, the strange beliefs that arose in some tribes when modern aircraft began arriving, disgorging their cargoes. Want to check, go here.
Macquarie got a bit indignant about the deniersphere's release of Salby's whiney statement about why he got sacked so they issued their own statement. Fair enough. They can put their side. Willard has a pop:
Given the furor this has generated, it seems odd they’d leave this to the lowest person on the organizational ladder. -Anthony
Lowest on the ladder or not, Ms Mitchell's role is:
Golda offers support to staff and students to assist with their communication needs. She also acts as a media liaison, handling enquiries and acting as a point of contact for media requests.
My bold because Willard obviously can't read. She did it, Anthony, because it's here job.
Nice touch, though, to link to her work phone and email addresses. Classy that, considering the type of pondlife that inhabits WUWT. I bet she can't wait to read her inbox tomorrow morning.
That’s all they have – he failed to show up for a class?
No, if you read the Macquarie statement, it is one of the things. But then again, as a teacher myself, if I didn't turn up to teach a class, I'd be knee deep in the doo doos. After all, it's what I am paid to do, amongst other things, like grading...
A disciplinary hearing without the disciplinee surely is illegal – even under Canadian law?
Well done TrevH. You win the prize for the stupidest comment. Macquarie is in Sydney, Australia , which, despite being in the Commonwealth, does not use Canadian law. But otherwise, Trev, buy an atlas.
And now, the power players flex their threat muscles:
Macquarie University’s “response” to the Salby affair brought two thoughts to mind. First, the University took the admittedly unusual step of responding at all because the University felt “…it is necessary to do so in order to correct misinformation.” Nowhere in its response do I see any “corrections to misinformation.” I see additional information and a possible alternate explanation for the University’s actions, but I see no “corrections to misinformation.” Second, I believe the University’s stated reason for responding is phony. If “correcting misinformation ” were the true reason for the response, the response would not be unusual. Surely there exist thousands of examples of “misinformation” to which the University simply remained silent. I believe the reason the University responded is because (a) it felt the pressure of the internet’s response to the affair, and (b) it may already have heard from some of the “powerful backers” alluded to in Lord Monckton’s statement: “This case is outrageous. I shall be finding out further details from Professor Salby and shall then arrange for powerful backers to assist him in fighting the university, which – if his side of the story is in all material respects true – has committed multiple criminal offenses. This needs to be a high-profile case.” All-in-all, I’m neither impressed by the University’s response nor convinced I was exposed to “misinformation.”
As usual, we can rely on Monckton to be on the ball. Problem is, he has backed off in the moment of giving his support ("... if his side of the story is in all material aspects true" which there is a good chance that it isn't). How Monckton knows that Macquarie has committed "multiple criminal offenses" I don't kow. I suspect he knows as much about Australian law as I do and I suspect that any matters arising out of employment are civil matters and not criminal ones. But I don't know.
As for correcting misinformation - I think giving what the university sees as the truth and not bothering with Salby's cry baby statement is correcting misinformation, as the university sees it. I guess Reed Corey uses the same opticians as Willard.
I got to admit, this could be the trial of the century for a CAGW run university. Too bad in Galileo’s time he did not have the internet and powerful backers to mount a proper challenge...
But Galileo did have powerful backers, including the Pope, Urban VIII and members of the Medici family. If Galileo hadn't been foolish, he wouldn't have got into the trouble he did. His fault, I'm afraid.
Failure to meet classes is one of the few things you can lose tenure and be fired for in a university, let alone for a contract employee. The other thing is that the committee included a union representative, and they are not exactly famed for not sticking to the letter of contracts.
Couldn't the deniers have spotted the bit I put in bold.
Anthony,
Be fair. The university has laid out credible reasons for the termination. It’s not enough to say it seems “weak” to you. On what basis? You have no idea of the what went on with the graduate student, so not fair to bring her in. Let’s at least wait to hear from the Professor.
We need to be better than the other side. We need to be fair minded and judicious. We have the science and data increasingly on our side. You’re only undermining your own credibility.
REPLY:I’m entitled to state my opinion, and my opinion at this point is that it seems weak. What remains to be seen is if the university constructed the situation by cancelling travel documents while Salby was away from the university. Dr. Salby in his original statement is the one who brought int he mention of the grad student, not I. had he not, there would be no reason to mention her. Note, I have not mentioned her name, only her existence and the fact that her email address at Macquarie seems to have been rescinded. – Anthony
Yes, Willard, you are entitled to state you opinion but the problem seems to be that the modest and sober statement of the university runs against teh petulant and childish (my opinion) statement by Salby, which you published. Did you not read it? Did you not want some answers to questions. I did.
What are the mysterious resources that Macquarie weren't providing? Why were lines of code needing to be converted? I think Australia has the internet, and Microsoft and Linux. Just saying.
Then there is the question of having been banned from reporting on his research, what was he doing in Europe:
Presentation of our research was then blocked by Macquarie. The obstruction was imposed after arrangements had been made at several venues (arranged then to conform to other restrictions imposed by Macquarie). Macquarie’s intervention would have silenced the release of our research.
and
Obligations to present our new research on greenhouse gases (previously arranged), had to be fulfilled at personal expense.
but
Upon arriving at Paris airport for my return to Australia, I was advised that my return ticket (among the resources Macquarie agreed to provide) had been cancelled. The latest chapter in a pattern, this action left me stranded in Europe, with no arrangements for lodging or return travel. The ticket that had been cancelled wasnon-refundable.
I'm confused. Not difficult because Salby's whinge contains a lot of vagueness but, if he was not permitted to present his findings yet went ahead and did so, that sounds like misconduct. And paying to fulfil the obligations was, apparently out of his own pocket so why was Macquarie paying for the air fare? I don't think Monckton's powerful backers are going to have a lot of success with this one.
“Failure to meet classes is one of the few things you can lose tenure and be fired for in a university…”
Fine. So long as that Policy is enforced across the board and applies to everyone, no problem.
But based on everything I’ve seen, I would suspect that this is a fabricated excuse to cover their butts. Plenty of staff miss classes on occasion — in every university. Further, at least in the U.S., just cause discipline requires an ascending series of warnings prior to termination.
Also, “.edu” unions in the U.S. are notoriously co-opted by school administrations. It is probably the same in Australia. What union worth it’s dues would cooperate in a disciplinary hearing where the subject was denied attendance by the actions of the school administration?
Like he'd know. I don't think the issue was missing the odd class because of some other, unexpected or planned absence, but an active avoidance. That's what the Macquarie statement says to me. Perhaps Smokey is forgetting his glasses so for his benefit, I've highlighted in bold, underlined and put in italics the key word:
After repeated directions to teach, this matter culminated in his refusal to undertake his teaching duties and he failed to arrive at a class he had been scheduled to take. (from the Macquarie statement)
PACER (the 2nd link) has all the documentation (online) in the federal civil suit that Dr. Salby filed against UC Boulder at .$0.10/page (but no charge if you stay below the quarterly page limit). I’ve already downloaded those particular case documents. Bottom line? Dr. Salby dropped the suit in order to refile a civil suit (IMHO, but NAL, Dr. Salby would have lost the federal case) in the state of Colorado district court system (Denver) and I’m in the process of getting a copy of those documents also (hardcopy only as I see no online versions available).
The federal court case is a rather interesting read though, not a mirror image of the current affair by any means, but there are several similarities IMHO, and on the state of Colorado court side, there might be a few other interesting cases of Dr. Salby’s (the last link charges $2.00/name search, I think there were 8-10 cases with names similar to Murry Salby, with a definite hit on the state court case that Dr. Salby filed).
Deja vu? You decide.
Could it be that Salby has form? Don't know and not going to follow the trail. I'm sure someone else will but it is interesting that his previous employmentseems to have ended in some acrimony. But the documents might tell a different story.
Theo Goodwin says: July 10, 2013 at 1:22 pm “It is long established in academia that missing classes is not a firing offense.”
But “refusal to undertake his teaching duties” “fter repeated directions to teach” would be a firing offense in any context.
And finally, I'm not sure what actually Salby is moaning about, other than losing his job. Running off to a lecture series having been suspended sounds like employment suicide but we don't really know. As for the teaching bit. From what those ratings say near the top, I'm not sure the students wanted to turn up to his classes either. Now wouldn't that be ironic - Salby missed a class that no students attended.
“I’m sure the greenies will be following this closely, rooting for a hurricane to hit that nearby oil platform or coal power plant onshore.”
Actually they root for any kind of destruction, whether its an oil platform or anything else. I remember hurricane Irene a couple of years ago, it was barreling toward the east coast and then it fizzled when it hit the shore. The disappointment on the tv reporters faces was clear, the disappointment from the greenies was obvious as well. Irene demonstrated that these people actually hope and pray that a storm will cause huge destruction like Sandy did last fall. Somehow it makes them feel good, perhaps even happy. Wow.
I don’t know how greenies can look themselves in the mirror each day, I really don’t.
It's easy to do, Klem. You just look. You don't have anything to be ashamed of because you don't want those oil platforms or coal plants to be hit by a hurricane because you know that real people work there, real people who have to make a living somehow and don't live in a fantasy world of fake science and cherry picked graphs. You know that the world is not as you would like it to be but if you could make it a little bit better, then you would. And you certainly don't make sweeping generalisations that, if you changed the word greenies for, let say, any religious group or ethnic identity, you would feel ashamed to type.
Klem, basically, you don't know what you are talking about. That's because you seem to swallow the denier brand, hook, line and sinker.
I could not let this comment go because it is just so stupid. But I won't comment on WUWT because that would give Klem's friends a piece of meat to have a feeding frenzy on. You know those sharks that go mad at the dead fish on a rope that lure in the sharks for the cameras. That's not for me. Trolls shouldn't feed the sharks.
Is this the sort of TV weather reporter that gets upset when hurricanes don't wipe out whole towns on mainland USA (let's ignore those pesky islands in the Caribbean)?
I am intrigued by Matt Ridley and what looks to me like open brain gullibility on his part. I had read a number of his books and been quite impressed, The Red Queen, The Origins Of Virtue, Genome. I read them all and liked them. Then came his nature vs nurture book which came out at about the same time as Stephen Pinker's much better book and I lost interest in Ridley and buying his latest. So his most recent volume, the one that has been so controversial, The Rational Optimist, stayed resolutely on the shelf in my local bookshop.
Something I hadn't noticed amongst all the posts I have read about how good a science writer he is, is that I don't go back to those three books listed above. Unlike Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould and others, I don't hunt out Ridley's books. Read 'em, shelve 'em, forget 'em. That's been my experience. Obviously others will have had different experiences.
In looking around the Net I came across a report and extracts of a lecture Ridley gave in 2011 entitled Scientific Heresy (full text here). In it, Ridley sets some statements that he then comments upon. Nothing much to look at there, you might think, except, of course, as a newly minted denier (a flipper in WUWT terminology, although that insult is reserved for those crossing the River Styx to the lighter side).
What I thought I would do is turn some of those statements around, to see how they look from what you might call the evidenced and rational side of the climate change debate - the scientific accepting side.
Christopher Booker (c/o The Guardian)
1: the stunning gullibility of the media
That would be the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph then, printing guff galore by their inhouse deniers. James Delingpole and Christopher Booker, delightfully overqualified to comment on science through their non-science degrees. They swallow wholesale the unevidenced, unscientific ramblings that the denier crowd produce and filter it for the mainstream audience. I used to read Christopher Booker and think he made sense. Now I know he doesn't and it's been years since I bothered to read a word he wrote.
2: debunking is like water off a duck’s back to pseudoscience.
Judging by what goes down at WUWT, and the way that Willard and his cronies don't bother to listen to dissenting voices from those with scientific training, it is clear how well this goes for WUWT and the rest of the deniers. It is hard to say what scientific evidence would satisfy the deniers but I'm guessing that vast areas of the mainland of the USA inundated by the sea might give them cause to think they might have been wrong all along. But then again, it would probably be because there was a tennis court next to the weather station or that all the world's polar bear population had jumped into the Arctic Ocean at once.
3. We can all be both. Newton was an alchemist
Yes, but... No one really bothers with Newton's theological or alchemical discoveries but what he found out about light and dynamics was fundamental to our understanding of the world. Linus Pauling, double Nobel laureate, clung to a belief that vitamin C might cure a ton of illnesses. He was wrong. Newton was wrong about alchemy. You can certainly do both, but being right is what matters in science.
4: the heretic is sometimes right
Ridley doesn't give any examples so I had to think of some. Barry Marshall, the discoverer that peptic ulcers are caused by bacterial infections, is one and he cautions those that do claim wonderful new discoveries that overturn our understand of X, Y or Z that you need to be prepared to see every other scientist in the world pick holes in your idea. Once again, it is being right that matters. Alfred Wegener is another but in a way he is remembered less because he was right than that he pointed the way. Heretics don't usually prosper in science, not because science is not open to new ideas, but because heretics are so frequently wrong.
5: keep a sharp eye out for confirmation bias in yourself and others
Well, clearly. But it works both ways and strangely deniers don't seem to admit that they suffer from confirmation bias while science generally does. That's why science accepts the less than perfect peer review process because it is something of a brake on the runaway train that could ensue if confirmation bias were not restricted in some way. And, of course, the fear that your discovery is easily trashed means that scientists are looking for the best evidence. For deniers, anything will do at times.
6. Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future. Futurology is pseudoscience
I'm not sure what to make about this. There are some things where I will rely on the consensus of experts to tell me about the future. For instance, I am pretty certain that the experts who calculate these things will be able to tell me exactly when and where I should be to see the next total eclipse of the Sun. But I don't think that's what Ridley means. He is trying to discredit climate science by rubbishing predictions - well, at least real climate scientists remember that all predictions are uncertain and their publications reflect this. Deniers, of course, don't like uncertainty and see that as a sign of weakness. Scientists know it is a strength because it gives a measure of the probability of certain events.
I rather think that Ridley is concerned with two sorts of futurology. Those predictions based on someone's opinion. I never read Martin Rees's book The Next Fifty Years so I can't be sure it was as pessimistic as it was painted in reviews, but I suspect Ridley's Optimist book is a bit of a rejoinder to that. Not sure I care. We all rely on experts making predictions and because the real world is messy and data is noisy, predictions are difficult, especially about such things as the economy or the weather. And we don't bother to remember the predictions that are right, only the ones that are wrong.
According to Matt Ridley, this man is a pseudoscientist.
Ridley clearly thought he was being clever when he came up with that list of statements. They fitted his thesis, that climate change is a bit, well, you know, of a hoax type fraud conspiracy thing and that it isn't going to be as bad as everyone says.
Isn't there something sad about the person who says they are an expert in detecting baloney and then doesn't practice what they preach? I prefer the Sagan list, his baloney detection kit (my comments in bold).
Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts. Like the multiple lines of evidence that support Mann's hockey stick graph.
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of
all points of view. Not excluding them, deriding them or slandering them.
Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no
"authorities"). No, it is the evidence that forms the consensus.
Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that
caught your fancy. Can Watts and cronies entertain the possibility that there are other explanations for their wonderings? No, they don't seem to be able to.
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. Just watch what happens when someone criticises a denier's magnum opus on WUWT to see how wedded to their denials they are.
Quantify, wherever possible. Do the math but do it honestly.
If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work. Climate science has plenty of verifiable physics and chemistry underlying it. The deniers just deny that is ever true.
Occam's razor - if there are two hypotheses that explain the data equally
well choose the simpler. Just because it sounds plausible to Willard, doesn't mean that there is a better explanation. Usually there is.
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to
be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others
duplicate the experiment and get the same result? Climate change is verifiable and we are currently running the experiment. Let's, for instance, add more and more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and measure the temperature of the planet. If what the scientists claim is true, we will see it in a warmer planet. If not, we won't.
The reason scientific heretics don't usually make a mark is simple. It is not down to authorities or consensus. It is down to plain, honest old data. That basic Lego brick of science, without which there will be no science and no theories. And it is the thing that calls the deniers deniers.
Criss Jami, wiser than Anthony Watts
“Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.”
In a moment of solidarity, I have added the blog Watching The Deniers to my list. So up the workers, freedom for Tooting and power to the people, right on.
The response is what interests me. Willard felt libelled so he fired off some angry responses and the pet alligators who comment on WUWT circled in their pool sensing blood. Strangely, their comments reveal a lot of the mendacity that climate science deniers like to use. That and threats and ad hominem accusations and juvenile insults.
Pretty weak sort of site. The owners don’t seem to even have the guts to put their names up anywhere, let alone any sort of qualification.
Basically a bunch of non-entities !
John Cook’s boy friend , perhaps ??
So, not putting a name to your work is pretty weak. Like Abzats and his fantasy on peer review. And John Cook's [of SkepticalScience.com] boyfriend - pretty cheap that one.
I hope Mariott thanks you for the traffic to his site. He will get more traffic in one day from WUWT than he probably gotten in all thw time the site has been launched. WUWT, making alarmist dickheads famous, one idiot at a time.
If you don’t challenge liars, their lies don’t get challenged. Yes there is an issue of drawing attention to alarmists, but WTD gets a fair bit of attention anyway. Exposing their malice and incompetence to ridicule at least allows people to see them as they truly are.
Let's be very charitable and say that no one ever lies on WUWT. Economical with the truth, perhaps, but not lying. We never did hear what happened to the Heartland delegation in China. Presumably the Chinese stood them up. But when mistakes are pointed out, and they are repeated, it is difficult not to call it lying. It is typical denier behaviour - to ignore the truth, to bury your head in the sand, to put your fingers in your ear and go "la, la, la" - definitely not to admit the mistake unless you can help it. Disappear the post down the memory hole, like one on Greenland ice a few week's back.
Ignoring Worrall's tautology, there is a sweet irony here. Challenging the misinformation at WUWT does not meet with a charitable reception. It meets with insults, snide comments and more. Willard has named and shamed some who have had the temerity to claim that black is black and white is white, unlike our denier friends who abuse science and maths to further their own ends, whatever they might be. Watts and his cronies are occasionally very malicious. I've been down that line and I shall not bother again.
I wouldn’t hold my breathe waiting for a reply. Mike can his various lap-dog regulars live in a parallel universe where they are never wrong and ‘deniers’ are never right. And Mike’s activist approach to comments ensures that anything that shows him or his pals in error is ‘appropriately’ dealt with.
Once again, the irony is overpowering. Deniers cling to their cherished pseudofacts for as long as they possibly can, repeating the claims long after they have been debunked or making weak claims about peer review. And I thought the word denier was banned at WUWT.
Mike Marriott is co-author, with John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky, of the Recursive Fury paper which accuses Anthony Watt and others of conspiracist ideation.
Watts certainly doesn't snip comments of a conspiracist nature and there are plenty of accusations flying around on WUWT about fraud and conspiracy amongst climate scientists so it is hard to deny that accusation, even if it is true. A simple way to avoid it would be for Watts and his moderators to challenge any conspiracy comments but they do not.
Watts and his chums certainly bristle when they are challenged. Out come the threats of legal action (Monckton is good at that, but his lawyers are probably starving because he doesn't seem to follow through with that very often, and his fight with the BBC didn't turn out too well). And we should not forget that deniers are quite keen on throwing around unevidenced and unpleasant insults - climate scientists are perpetrating a fraud, a conspiracy and so on - without worrying about any consequences.
My last post contained my belief that Watts can be considered to act in a hypocritical manner. Today's actions just reinforce that. With my concern troll hat on, Watts could seriously do himself some favours by ridding his site of the conspiracy trash (although that would mean Monckton going down a hole amongst others) and being a bit more scientific (how about some references in more of the posts, discussions of possible errors and evaluations of the reliability of the conclusions rather than being quite so definite?) and actually reading the submissions first. If he does read them, then read them twice before posting. There's a lot of rubbish on that site, lots of easily debunked stuff that those with better qualifications at than me get down to doing.
Finally, take this, brother, may it serve you well.
